Tag: russiagate

Washington Post and Pulitzer Board keep mum on prize-winning but debunked Trump-Russia stories

The Washington Post and the Pulitzer Prize Board are refusing to answer questions about an award-winning 2017-story that relied on the Trump-Russia collusion hoax — an article which a key player in the story told investigators long ago was “wrong.”

Just the News reported earlier this month that former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers told FBI agents that the crux of a Pulitzer Prize award-winning Washington Post story on the Russian collusion hoax was “wrong.” More than two weeks later the release of those documents, neither the outlet — whose branding is “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — nor the board responsible for arguably the most prestigious award in journalism, are answering questions about the refutation by Rogers, which was revealed in newly-declassified Crossfire Hurricane files.

Prize-winning story rebuked only one month after publication

Admiral Rogers, who retired in 2018 after four years as NSA chief and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, spoke with FBI agents and a key member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in June 2017, where he dismantled a May 2017 story by the Post titled, “Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence.”

The Post story would go on to be among the Russiagate stories published by the outlet to win a Pulitzer Prize for “a distinguished example of reporting on national affairs” in 2018. Trump is currently suing the Pulitzer Board for defamation for continuing to defend the awards it gave to this collusion-related story and others.

After two weeks and multiple requests for comment, the Pulitzer Prize Board and the Washington Post have yet to respond to requests for comment by Just the News about the 2017 story and the 2018 award, about whether they had known about the refutation by Rogers, and what their reaction was to the newly-declassified FBI interview by the ex-NSA chief. The board did not answer whether this made them reconsider the granting of their award, and the outlet still refuses to answer whether they would correct or update the story.

The recently released Rogers interview with the Mueller team shows that the then-NSA director was read a quote from The Washington Post article — that “President Trump urged [Rogers] to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election” — with the FBI notes stating that “Rogers responded that the media characterization was wrong, and the President had asked about the existence of SIGINT [signals intelligence] evidence only.”

The Post claimed that its story “add[ed] to a growing body of evidence that Trump sought to co-opt and then undermine Comey before he fired him” in May 2017. The alleged evidence was refuted by Rogers, and the 2019 Mueller report said the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Keep reading

Von der Leyen’s paws are all over Ireland’s counter disinformation strategy

The government of Ireland’s 55 page counter disinformation strategy, available for free download here, is worth perusing to show how pervasive and thorough Von der Leyen’s emerging censorship web is. The first thing that critical readers might note is that there is no mention of Irish sources of disinformation, but that Russian sources of disinformation are mentioned five times.

In addition to that blatant show of Russophobia, its obsession with Moscow shows that this report is not only lop-sided, biased and partisan but that it comes up short in the empirical stakes as well. Though one might imagine that such a government funded report would give example after example of mis-information to bolster its case, that would be to mis-interpret its function, which is to put in place the censorship pillars on which not only Ireland but all of von der Leyen’s Europe will rest. Far better to close the angle, forget specific examples of mis-information and prattle on with catechisms of pseudo scientific cliches.

Thus, though there is no mention of the recurring patterns of NATO false flag operations that other SCF contributors frequently draw attention to, there are lists after lists of the pillars that must be legislated for to make not only Ireland but all of Europe safe again from the free flow of information.

The table of contents shows how the report is neatly divided into a number of sections to achieve von der Leyen’s aims. We first of all have an overview of the issue, explaining how Ireland is challenged by disinformation and how Ireland and Europe must respond, presumably by banning Russia Today, which I can now only get by using a VPN. Although an empirical or applied approach might devote a line or two to the mortal challenge Russia Today or SCF’s excellent Bruna Frascolla poses to us all, there is none of that. Instead, we must accept that Russia Today and Bruna Frascolla are coming for our jugulars and only von der Leyen and her Irish-based minions can save us from them, which is rather odd as I find the information to noise ratio much higher in them than I do in the Irish or British media.

So much for their silly overview. The next section spells out five principles through which counter-information will be fought. These essentially amount to the European Union agreeing on a narrative and that narrative being bolstered from the local level right up to von der Leyen herself. No matter whether it is Israeli war crimes in Gaza or NATO war crimes in Ukraine and Syria, all parties will spread the agreed narrative and gang up on those, who might suggest subversive counter-narratives regarding Hunter Biden’s lap top, von der Leyen’s Covid 19 vaccine profiteering and so on. Regarding Covid 19, the views of paid political and scientific hucksters will be accepted and those with alternative views will be punished on whatever pretext best suits the particular situation.

Although freedom of expression will be guaranteed, that freedom will not extend to those heretics, who question the prevailing narrative and who thereby put the entire clown show at risk. “Resilience and trust” in the powers that be will be drilled into the masses and the civil society networks they work though and “corporate accountability and regulatory enforcement” will further cement the narrative into our collective psyche. As in all quasi-military campaigns, there will be “cooperation, collaboration and coordination”, otherwise known as C3 or command, control and communications by the U.S. Military. Finally, there will be punishments as a matter of principle for dissenters and other heretics.

Keep reading

U.S. attorney scrutinizes ‘false statements’ by Mueller prosecutor who targeted Papadopoulos

The U.S. attorney for the nation’s capital sent a letter last week to a former member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, scrutinizing the Mueller prosecutor’s role in targeting and convicting former Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos.

Ed Martin, who has been the interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. since January 20, sent the letter to ex-Mueller prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, who resigned from the Justice Department following Trump’s 2024 victory. Trump nominated Martin for the full-time position in March, while Senate Democrats have been seeking to delay or block his nomination.

“Declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation documents released under federal Freedom of Information laws have raised questions about the integrity and legality of your work as a federal prosecutor in the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation — a probe which failed to prove then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia and is now known to be falsely predicated,” the U.S. attorney told the former Mueller team member in a Monday letter obtained by Just the News and first reported by the New York Sun. Martin also raised questions about Zelinsky’s stint a decade ago teaching at a Chinese Communist Party-linked law school in China.

Zelinksy said in late February that “I’m excited to join a group of smart, talented, and fearless lawyers at Zuckerman Spaeder LLP.” His law firm bio notes that he “served as Assistant Special Counsel to Robert S. Mueller, III, where he led the Special Counsel Office’s investigation and prosecution of Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos.”

Keep reading

Obama CIA Director “Brennan was responsible for the origin of Russiagate”

Conventional wisdom holds that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should never have started the investigation of President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign for alleged ties to Russia. FBI agents with a “predisposition to investigate Trump” initiated the Crossfire Hurricane investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” concluded the Justice Department’s special counsel John Durham.

However, it appears more likely that the CIA, not the FBI, started the investigation.

Public and Racket last year reported that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, initiated the Intelligence Community (IC) conspiracy to frame Trump as a secret Russian agent.

Sources told us that Brennan had foreign IC assets give information to the CIA to essentially entrap naive Trump campaign advisors and then pass the information on to the FBI.

And now a former CIA counterterrorism chief for Pakistan, John Kiriakou told Public, “I always believed that it was Brennan who was responsible for the origin of Russiagate.”

Keep reading

Unsealed Crossfire Hurricane Docs Further Prove Russiagate Was A Hoax All Along

Democrats and their media allies have run a lot of unsubstantiated hoaxes throughout the past several years. And while each is damaging in its own way, one of the biggest and arguably most destructive conspiracies perpetuated by these actors and Americans’ own government was the unsubstantiated narrative that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

Despite a complete lack of “actual” corroborating evidence, leftists spent years fomenting delusions that the New York-born billionaire, while in cahoots with the Kremlin, had masterminded a scheme to undermine American “democracy” and deny Hillary Clinton the White House. Even worse was many of these conspiracies were aided by U.S. intel agencies like the FBI, which concocted a years-long investigation (“Crossfire Hurricane”) into Trump’s first presidency using baseless “evidence” bought and paid for by a Clinton campaign-hired law firm.

While Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 analysis of the FBI’s antics confirmed what The Federalist had reported for years — that there was no evidenciary basis for the agency’s anti-Trump probe — the damage the conspiracy had done to Americans’ trust in elections was already complete. And now, almost two years after Durham’s bombshell report, newly released documents further prove the baselessness of the scheme.

Obtained by The Federalist late last week, the nearly 700 pages of government records offer an introspective look into the FBI’s efforts to undermine Trump using its crooked Crossfire Hurricane operation.

Keep reading

New York Times Lies About Why Kash Patel Suspended Analyst Key To FBI Corruption

The New York Times continues to cover up government corruption, on April 11 hitting FBI Director Kash Patel for suspending analyst Brian Auten nearly a decade after Auten helped Democrats frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset. The NYT headline reads, “F.B.I. Suspends Employee on Patel’s So-Called Enemies List,” not something accurate such as “FBI Suspends Employee Who Illegally Abused Government Power To Protect Democrat Presidential Candidates.”

Predictably, other corporate media outlets took the same corrupt angle, notably an April 12 NBC article by “Fusion Ken” Dilanian and Alexandra Marquez.

Dilanian is known as a Democrat propaganda mouthpiece, particularly for spreading lies created by the Hillary Clinton campaign to smear Trump as a Russian asset. Those lies came from probable Russian assets such as Christopher Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko, meaning Clinton and Dilanian may have used actual Russian propaganda to falsely accuse their political enemies of … spreading Russian propaganda. Dilanian once described the now widely discredited Steele, whom the FBI paid for information, as “James Bond.”

The Clinton campaign paid Steele to fabricate lies about Trump in a “dossier” that Democrat operatives in the government helped launder through U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. Auten was the top FBI “analyst” assigned to verify the dossier. His team, he testified to Congress in 2020, could not verify any of its salacious allegations that included the infamous “golden showers” nonsense.

So Auten knew the “dossier” was full of lies as early as 2017. Yet Auten’s “Crossfire Hurricane” FBI team still used the unverifiable, false material to back secret warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, fueling further leaks of false information that saddled Trump’s first term with investigations and clouds of public suspicion.

Keep reading

Kash Patel’s FBI Suspends Deep State Operative Brian Auten — Analyst Who Pushed Trump-Russia Hoax, Discredited Hunter Biden Scandal, and Was Behind Mar-a-Lago Raid: Report

After years of stonewalling, spin, and subversion of truth, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the leadership of Director Kash Patel, has finally placed Deep State operative Brian Auten on administrative leave.

Sources familiar with the matter told the New York Times that Auten was placed on administrative leave last week.

Auten’s suspension comes after years of public outcry over his corrupt misconduct inside the Bureau, which turned the FBI into an arm of the Democrat Party.

He was a key player in Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s scandalous counterintelligence investigation based on the now-discredited Steele Dossier.

According to the DOJ Inspector General, Auten failed to alert FBI leadership about gaping holes and fabrications in the dossier, yet still aggressively pushed for illegal FISA warrants on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Let’s be clear: this was the FBI spying on a presidential campaign based on false evidence — and Brian Auten was in the thick of it.

But Auten didn’t stop at attacking Trump. In 2020, just weeks before the election, whistleblowers allege that Auten authored an internal FBI report that falsely labeled damning information about Hunter Biden as “Russian disinformation.”

That report effectively shut down the FBI’s investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings — conveniently just in time to protect Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

Keep reading

The Declassified Crossfire Hurricane Documents

Just the News and The Federalist released the declassified Crossfire Hurricane documents. This collection of documents is known as the Russiagate binder. It consists of seven files totaling hundreds of pages related to the FBI’s 2016 investigation into alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, known as Crossfire Hurricane. The documents include sensitive raw intelligence of Russian agents.

The David Solomon Just the News documents are unredacted from Kash Patel. They appear damning.

Nearly 700 pages of declassified records from the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into now-discredited claims of the 2016 Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia were turned over to Congress by the FBI this week and obtained Thursday exclusively by Just the News.

Keep reading

REDACTED: Crossfire Hurricane answers remain blacked out years after Trump declassification order

Key documents from the FBI’s politicized Crossfire Hurricane investigation into false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion remain hidden from public view, but a new order from President Trump will reveal more answers — and documents already obtained by Just the News provide clues on what is to come.

Just the News obtained a portion of the Crossfire Hurricane documents slated for declassification in January 2021, although the majority of the FBI records remain out of the public’s reach due to the Justice Department thwarting Trump. The documents revealed by Just the News in 2021 were interesting both for the new details they revealed and for what remained. Large sections still remain blacked out and hidden from public view behind ongoing redactions.

The declassified documents included transcripts of intercepts made by the FBI of Trump aides, a declassified copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court, and the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper, who the bureau used to investigate whether Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

Keep reading

Leftist Director Oliver Stone Slams Dems for Lying Russiagate Attack on Trump

Last week, left-wing movie director Oliver Stone was in Washington, DC, to testify to Congress regarding the JFK assassination files.

Stone’s 1991 political thriller, JFK, explores the investigation of Jim Garrison into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The film challenges the official Warren Commission report and suggests a conspiracy involving the CIA, the military-industrial complex, and then Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

While in DC, a reporter asked Stone if he was surprised that the public does not know more about the assassination attempt against President Trump and would-be assassin Thomas Crooks.

Stone answered, “I’m surprised we don’t. Yeah, I don’t know much about him. I mean, they have not done their homework.”

“They’re not reporting it.  I would like to know more. Certainly, the parents and history….”  he trailed off.

The reporter then pressed Stone about Russiagate.

“And do you think President Trump wanting to take on the FBI, the CIA, the Intelligence agencies is a good move after what happened to him with the Russia probe and all that?”

Stone responded, “Yeah.  Look at Russiagate. We paid for it.  Russiagate was the result and he’s got….I applaud that. And I hate what they did with Russiagate, I really do.”

“I think it’s, again, the lying, lying, lying…and selling that to the American people.”

“And the whole thing with hating Russia is so negative. It’s so un-American.”

To close the conversation, the reporter then asked, “My last one for you would just be, do you think Trump is right when he says there’s a weaponization against conservatives specifically.”

“Absolutely…there was.”

Keep reading